by T. J. Stiles
25 Herman A. Krooss, ed., A Documentary History of Banking and Currency in the United States (New York: Chelsea House, 1965), 90, 1059.
26 Taylor, 56–7; Pred, 14, 20–77, 112–4; Licht, xv–xvii; Sidney Ratner, James H. Soltow, and Richard Sylla, The Evolution of the American Economy: Growth, Welfare, and Decision Making (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 105–7; Nathan Miller, The Enterprise of a Free People: Aspects of Economic Development in New York State During the Canal Period, 1792–1838 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962), 67; Curtis P. Nettels, The Emergence of a National Economy, 1775–1815 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1962), 292; Kulikoff, 30–3; W. T. Newlyn and R. P. Bootle, The Theory of Money (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 1–18; Leslie V. Brock, The Currency of the American Colonies, 1700–1764: A Study in Colonial Finance and Imperial Relations (New York: Arno Press, 1975), 2–37, 75–6; Jack Weatherford, The History of Money: From Sandstone to Cyberspace (New York: Crown, 1997), 112–36; Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 235–6; Ross M. Robertson, History of the American Economy, 2nd ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), 82, 127–8, 144; Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1820 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3–23. Lindstrom, 1, argues that household manufacturing peaked in 1815. Margaret G. Myers discusses bills of exchange and the personal nature of credit in The New York Money Market, vol. 1: Origins and Development (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), 46–57. Robert E. Wright, The Wealth of Nations Rediscovered: Integration and Expansion in American Financial Markets, 1780–1850 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 318–21, discusses the inherent problems with bills of exchange. Edwin J. Perkins, American Public Finance and Financial Services, 1700–1815 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1994), 261–73, discusses the transition from informal relationships to formal institutions in credit and finance, and the lack of interstate institutions. Bruegel offers an excellent discussion of book debt and personal relationships in trade, 42–3. On the shilling, Spanish money, and money of account in general, see MM, April 1852. The New York County Clerk's office abounds with lawsuits over unpaid promissory notes; see, for example, Isaac Spencer Jr. v. Daniel Drew, Nelson Robinson, Robert W. Kelley, and Daniel B. Allen, March 20, 1848, file 1848–951A, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC.
27 Fritz Redlich and Webster M. Christman, “Early American Checks and an Example of Their Use,” BHR 41, no. 3 (autumn 1967): 285–302; Elkins and McKitrick, 114–61; Burrows & Wallace, 310–2; Myers, 1:8–17; Miller, 78–9. It should be stressed that Hamilton remained immersed in mercantilistic thinking; he sought to harness the merchant economy to the new federal government to enhance national power, and failed in his attempt to create a manufacturing sector through federal direction; see Wood, 262–4.
28 Thomas Cochran, “The Business Revolution,” AHR 79, no. 5 (December 1974): 1449–66; Pauline Maier, “The Revolutionary Origins of the American Corporation,” WMQ, 3rd ser., vol. 50, no. 1 (January 1993): 51–84; Shaw Livermore, “Advent of Corporations in New York,” NYHis 16, no. 3 (July 1935): 245–98; Oscar Handlin and Mary F. Handlin, “Origins of the American Business Corporation,” JEH 5, no. 1 (May 1945): 1–23; Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 110–11; Gregory A. Mark, “The Personification of the Business Corporation in American Law,” University of Chicago Law Review 54, no. 4 (autumn 1987): 1441–83; Naomi R. Lamoreaux, “Partnerships, Corporations, and the Limits on Contractual Freedom in U.S. History: An Essay in Economics, Law, and Culture,” in Kenneth Lipartito and David B. Scilia, eds., Constructing Corporate America: History, Politics, Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 29–65; Ronald E. Seavoy, “Laws to Encourage Manufacturing: New York Policy and the 1811 General Incorporation Statute,” BHR 46, no. 1 (spring 1972): 85–95; Robert E. Wright, “Bank Ownership and Lending Patterns in New York and Pennsylvania, 1781–1831,” BHR 73, no. 1 (spring 1999): 40–60; Nettels, 289–94; Douglass, 46; Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 146–7; James Willard Hurst, The Legitimacy of the Business Corporation in the Law of the United States, 1780–1970 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1970), 13–32. On the centrality of the financial sector, see especially Perkins and Wright, Wealth of Nations, who argue with great clarity that a financial revolution was central to the other revolutions in the American economy, including that in transportation.
29 Parton, 378; NYT, January 5, 1877; NYTr, January 5, 1877; Lane, 10–11. Regarding CV's strength and endurance, see the reminiscences of his assistant, LW Dictation. On New York City's role as the center of a large hinterland of market farming, see Countryman, 314.
30 For CVs early writing, see the following letters from CV to TG: February 2, 1819; February 24, 1819; January 5, 1820; November 16, 1821; March 1, 1822; November 4, 1822; all in GP; see also CV to JWR, n.d., RWG. A Staten Island historian speculated that CV “got his three months' education” at a Moravian academy; Staten Island Advance, June 29, 1907.
31 Lane, ion.
32 Lane, 11–14; Parton, 378; NYT, January 5, 1877; NYTr, January 5, 1877; HW, March 5, 1859; MM, January 1865.
33 NYTr, November 10, 1869; Paul A. Gilje, “On the Waterfront: Workers in New York City in the Early Republic, 1800–1850,” NYHis 77, no. 4 (October 1996): 395–426.
34 Lambert, 2:64.
35 This anecdote was often repeated in various forms in biographical material (see, for example, Croffut, 17). This version is taken from a brief memorandum of a conversation with CV, written by an unknown party, in the VFP The memorandum reflects some confusion, as do most anecdotes (it refers to CV being sixteen in 1812), but it appears to be the authentic record of a story told by CV himself.
36 V. S. Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 77.
37 VFP; Croffut, 17; Lane, 13.
38 Croffut, 17–18; Lane, 13–14; Parton, 378–9; NYT, January 5, 1877; NYTr, January 5, 1877; HW, March 5, 1859; MM, January 1865.
39 SA, June 18, 1853.
40 Croffut, 17–18; Lane, 13–14; Parton, 378–9; NYT, January 5, 1877; NYTr, January 5, 1877; HW, March 5, 1859; MM, January 1865; SA, June 18, 1853.
41 Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, 587.
42 HW, March 5, 1859; MM, January 1865; John Komlos, “The Height and Weight of West Point Cadets: Dietary Change in Antebellum America,” JEH 47, no. 4 (December 1987): 897–927. CV was described as running a “packet” ferry in EP, February 4, 1818.
43 HW, March 5, 1859; MM, January 1865; Parton, 376–80; Lane, 15–17; Croffut, 19–21; Blunt's Stranger's Guide, 207n, 223; Guernsey, 1:53. On CVs temper, see NYTr, March 27, 1878; NYW, November 13, 14, 1877.
44 Burrows & Wallace, 409–23; Edward L. Beach, The United States Navy: A 200-Year History (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 51–71.
45 Guernsey, 1:1–16, 120–3, 159–60, 218, 317–22; Burrows & Wallace, 409–5; W. E. Apgar, “New York's Contribution to the War Effort of 1812,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin 29, no. 4, 203–12.
46 Guernsey, 2:301–2; MM, January 1865; Parton, 380; NYT, January 5, 1877; NYTr, January 5, 1877; EP, September 13, 1813.
47 Staten Island Church Records, 106; Parton, 381; Lane, 20–3.
48 Burrows & Wallace, 427–8; George W. Cullum, Campaigns of the War of 1812–15 Against Great Britain (New York: James Miller, 1879), 174–7.
49 Parton, 381–2; Lane, 18–19; Dorothy Kelly MacDowell, Commodore Vanderbilt and His Family (Hendersonville, N.C.: privately printed, 1989), 22; Howard B. Rock, “A Delicate Balance: The Mechanics and the City in the Age of Jefferson,” NYHSQ 63, no. 2 (April 1979): 93–114. Many boatmen were black; see the testimony of Joseph Bonnington, July 1, 1820, GP, and “Thomas Gibbons against Isaac Morse,” Cases of the Court of Errors of the State of New Jerse
y (November Term, 1821), 253–71 (copy in GP), a lawsuit involving a slave who escaped with the aid of a free black ferry captain in 1818.
50 New York City Census, First Ward, 1816, NYMA.
51 Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 369–70.
52 Wilentz, 23–60; Blumin, 20–65, quotes on 26, 32–3, 64; Lambert, 2:90, 100; Albion, 235–59. On the new assertiveness of the artisans in the Revolution, see especially Edward Countryman, A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).
53 Pred; Perkins, 271–3, 350–62; Wright, Wealth of Nations, 18–25; Albion, 235–59; Guernsey, 2:512–14; Ross M. Robertson, History of the American Economy, 2nd ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), 82–4. The discussion of promissory notes reflects the author's work in contemporary collections; see, for example, almost any lawsuit from this period in the Court of Common Pleas, NYCC; TG to George Johnston, February 2, 1810 (“In money transactions in the city I have always had assurances that my paper would pass current”), and TG to David B. Ogden, June 1, 1816, GP.
54 Guernsey, 2:458–9, 483–94; Wilentz, 23.
55 Wilentz, 23; Albion, 9–15.
56 Lane, 22–5; Croffut, 26; Wilentz, 35; Morrison, 169; EP, November 20, 1812; NYH, January 5, 14, 1877; NYW, January 5, 1877; NYT, January 5, 1877. The cost estimate of a boat is based on the sale of a fully equipped twenty-seven-ton periauger for $750 to TG, John C. Hatfield to TG, July 17, 1817, GP On the Chesapeake oyster schooners, and the role of Northern ships in the trade, see Geoffrey M. Footner, Tidewater Triumph: The Development and Worldwide Success of the Chesapeake Bay Pilot Schooner (Centreville, Md.: Tidewater Publishers, 1998), 213–25. The records of the New York Custom House, now with the National Archives, remain fragmentary at best, and the writings of earlier historians suggest that some have been lost. Morrison writes that the Dread was the first vessel registered under CVs name, but I could not find that enrollment record. On later enrollments of the General Wolcott and the Dread, see Enrollment Number 248, July 16, 1817, vol. 12139, and Enrollment Number 21, February 26, 1821, vol. 12148, Port of New York Certificates of Enrolment [sic], Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation, RG 41, NA. The General Wolcott entry notes that it was “rebuilt from an open boat,” indicating CVs longer-range ambitions. For a reference to another of CVs periaugers, the Thorn, as a schooner, see EP, January 8, 1821.
57 John De Forest and Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr. vs. Daniel Morgan, April 5, 1817, file 1817-#337, Court of Common Pleas, and Cornelius Vanderbilt and Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr. vs. Phineas Carman and Cornelius P. Wyckoff, May 26, 1817, file 1817-#1261, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC; TG to Jonathan Johnston, November 24, 1817, GP; Morrison, 44. For background on the Mayor's Court, see Richard B. Morris, “The New York City's Mayor's Court,” in Leo Hershkowitz and Milton M. Klein, eds., Courts and Law in Early New York: Selected Essays (Port Washington, N.Y: National University Publications, 1978), 19–29.
58 Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, quotes on 460, 462, 463, 474, 476; for his perceptive discussion of economics and Americans' attitudes toward commerce, see 439–76. On the impact of the War of 1812 and the growth in banks, see Murray N. Rothbard, The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 1–19. Janet A. Riesman discusses the intertwining of banking and American attitudes toward commerce and credit in “Republican Revisions,” 1–44. Unquestionably the end of the war provided a boon to economic growth (see Albion and Taylor), but I agree with Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 5, in disagreeing with the “market revolution” thesis popularized by Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1820 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). For more arguments in the enormous debate over the emergence of capitalism, see Allan Kulikoff, “The Transition to Capitalism in Rural America,” WMQ, 3rd ser., vol. 46, no. 1 (January 1989): 120–44; Henretta, 289–304; Appleby, “Vexed Story,” 1–18; and Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution, 1–25, 56–90, 250–66.
59 Rochefoucauldt-Liancourt, 440; Appleby, “Vexed Story;” Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution, 55–91; Kulikoff, “Transition;” Lambert, 2:26–7, 33. On the trip by sloop from New York to Albany, see Hone, 905; Lambert, 2:41–9; Taylor, 15–31.
60 Taylor, 56–7; Pred, 14, 20–77, 112–4.
61 For a fine survey of the issues of westward migration and transportation, see Howe, 211–22.
62 For a splendid view of Broadway in 1819, clearly depicting the fashions of the day, see Stokes, vol. 3, plate 85.
63 Enrollment Number 248, July 16, 1817, vol. 12139, Port of New York Certificates of Enrolment [sic], Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation, RG 41, NA.
64 Lane, 22–25; TG to Jonathan Johnston, November 24, 1817, GP; Morrison, 44. Elizabethtown is now known as Elizabeth. It has often been said that CV himself renamed the Stoudinger the Mouse, but it was advertised as the Mouse before CV took command; see NBF, November 13, 1817. Lane and Croffut depict CV on New Year's Eve pondering the growing importance of steam, then making a calculated decision to learn about it by working for TG TG's letter to Johnston, however, demonstrates the fortuitous nature of his hiring of CV as well as the fact that it took place more than a month before year's end.
Two The Duelist
1 TG to Jonathan Johnston, November 24, 1817, GP.
2 CV quoted in Den D. Trumbull et al. v. Gibbons, April 10, 1849, 22 NJ L 117, 16.
3 TG to Thomas Heyward Gibbons, September 15, 1786, Georgia Gazette, September 14, 21, 1786, TG to George Johnston, February 2, 1810, George Johnston to TG, May 22, 1812, Petition of James Field to the Honorable George Walters, 1783, WG to TG, January 23, 1785, TG to WG, January 27, 1785, Memorandum by WG, March 15, 1848, GP. See also Isaac Woodruff to TG, July 20, 1817, Isaac Woodruff Papers, NYHS. In 1819, TG was described as a man of “immense wealth” in AO v. TG, Supreme Court of Judicature of the State of New Jersey (February Term, 1819), 2 South. 5, 612–36, 1005–15.
4 Thomas Gamble, Savannah Duels and Duellists, 1733–1877 (Savannah: Review Publishing & Printing, 1923), 41–4, 57–8; Carol S. Ebel, “Thomas Gibbons,” ANB; see also George R. Lamplugh, Politics on the Periphery: Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783–1806 (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1986).
5 For details on TG'S many holdings in New Jersey and Georgia, see a copy of TG'S will, Thomas Gibbons Papers, NYHS. TG described his move as a matter of climate and health; TG to Crawford Davison, June 1, 1818, GP. Various correspondence in the GP adumbrate the story of his illegitimate child, which he attempted to deny, against the advice of some of New York's leading attorneys. On New York's emerging role as creditor to Southern planters, see Philip S. Foner, Business and Slavery: The New York Merchants and the Irrepressible Conflict (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), 5–10; Albion, 95–121.
6 Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); Nancy Isenberg; Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York: Viking, 2007), 255–404. See also Saul Cornell, The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788–1828 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
7 Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 302; Frederic Cople Jaher, The Urban Establishment: Upper Strata in Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago, and Los Angeles (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 3, and, for an insightful discussion of the New York patricians before the Civil War, see 160–250. See also Wood.
8 Wood, 254–5, 269–70, 299–300; Martin Bruegel, Farm, Shop, Landing: The Rise of a Market Society in the Hudson Valley, 1780–1860 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 15–6, 36–8, 206; Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the Americ
an City, 1760–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 64–5; John Lauritz Larson, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 9–10. See also Edward Countryman, “From Revolution to Statehood,” in Milton M. Klein, ed., The Empire State: A History of New York (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 242–56, 264–8, 295–7; Dixon Ryan Fox, The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1919), 58–65.
9 Countryman, “From Revolution,” 242–68; Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels Through the United States of North America, the Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada, in the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797; with an Authentic Account of Lower Canada (London: R. Phillips, 1799), 587–8; Blumin, 58–64; Wood, 271–86. Particularly insightful is Gunn, esp. 70, 80–3. As Gunn writes, 83, New York before the end of the War of 1812 remained “a society in which public and private roles were virtually indistinguishable.” An amusing illustration of the Jeffersonian view of elite rule in the election of 1800 can be found in Eric Homberger, Mrs. Astor's New York: Money and Social Power in a Gilded Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 37. See also Edward Countryman's A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), which analyzes the radicalism of the Revolution and the conservative reaction.
10 Countryman, “From Revolution,” 369; Edward Countryman, The American Revolution (New York: Hill & Wang, 1985), 224–5; Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and the New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 5, 14–5, 20–2, 46–50, 54–5, 88.